# finite state machines

Published articles for finite state machines.

This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles.

## Determinism and Finite Automata--A Primer

DevFeed: [Determinism and Finite Automata--A Primer](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/determinism-and-finite-automata-a-primer-40217.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.jeremykun.com/2011/07/02/determinism-and-finite-automata-a-primer/>)

Published: 2011-07-02T23:41:30Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Jeremy Kun](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/jeremy-kun.md>)

Topics: [Automaton](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/automaton.md>), [function](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/function.md>)

Tags: [computability-theory](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/computability-theory.md>), [computing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/computing.md>), [context-free-languages](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/context-free-languages.md>), [deterministic-finite-automata](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/deterministic-finite-automata.md>), [finite-state-machines](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/finite-state-machines.md>), [function](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/function.md>), [input](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/input.md>), [language](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/language.md>), [mathematics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mathematics.md>), [nondeterministic-finite-automata](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/nondeterministic-finite-automata.md>), [primer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/primer.md>), [pushdown-automata](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/pushdown-automata.md>), [regular-languages](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/regular-languages.md>), [string](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/string.md>), [turing-machines](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/turing-machines.md>)

### AI overview

This primer introduces computation as a function that maps input to output, then develops a more rigorous model based on finite alphabets and strings. It explains how a computational model recognizes a language by accepting or rejecting strings.

### Source excerpt

The first step in studying the sorts of possible computations (and more interestingly, those things which cannot be computed) is to define exactly what we mean by a "computation." At a high level, this is easy: a computation is simply a function. Given some input, produce the appropriate output. Unfortunately this is much too general. For instance, we could define almost anything we want in terms of functions. Let $ f$ be the function which accepts as input the date of California Super Lotto drawings, and returns the set of winning numbers for that date.